I am one of the “French” journalists whose
tweets criticising Petro Poroshenko’s speech in Paris caused a storm on social
media. I’m actually a British citizen, but I work for French TV. First of all I
would like to say I regret the language I used. I should know by now that
tweets can be misinterpreted, and that Ukrainians are sensitive about the
trauma afflicting this country.
But I am disappointed that so many people
seemed to think I meant to suggest France’s suffering due to the events of 13
November is somehow worse or more important than Ukraine’s suffering since
February 2014. Of course I did not.
Even foreigners who do not follow the
Ukraine situation so closely know that far more Ukrainians have been directly
affected by the conflict here than French people were directly affected by the Paris
attacks.
Moreover the conflict continues to affect
Ukrainians in very concrete and tangible ways: destroyed homes, forced
migration, poverty… And also politicians using the conflict as an excuse for
not reforming. Poroshenko knows that and that is one of the reasons I found his
remarks so distasteful.
We should not put all violence, death and
destruction in the same basket and call it all “terrorism”. For Poroshenko to
say Ukrainians suffer the same as the French did is as if, for example, a
seriously injured victim of an armed robbery told a victim of sexual assault
they had suffered the same thing. That would be untrue – but it would not be a
judgement on who suffered the most.
What the French victims suffered was
something horrific: crazy murderous fanatics bent on killing everyone around.
It happened to people who didn’t think they were in any danger. Now, the
country lives in a climate of fear that it could happen again, anywhere.
People in Ukraine have not had that
experience. But far more of them have died or lost loved ones these past months.
Many live in areas where there is a very real risk of being hit by shelling.
Many have lost their homes and belongings, or lived in basements for months.
Been forced to move, and separated from their families – also, often, emotionally,
when some members of a family supported Russia.
I have been many times to the ATO zone; for
what it’s worth I have myself at times feared for my life in this war.
But that is what it is: a war. It is not a
“terrorist” problem. Ukraine has technical and political reasons for describing
its operations in the East as an “Anti-Terrorist Operation”. That designation
is much criticised in this country by those who say one should call a war a
war. Terrorism is a word I try to avoid at all times, but if you look at the
dictionary definition then yes, the attackers in Paris have one thing in common
with the separatists and mercenaries helping Russia achieve its goals in
Ukraine: they use(d) violence illegally. But the similarities, frankly, end
there.
It is simply unhelpful to try to draw
parallels between the Islamist-extremist threat, and actions directed by one
state against another. These problems require completely different solutions. It
is also not going to help Ukraine in the long run if Ukrainians do not
recognise that, like it or not, a significant minority of their compatriots sympathise
more with Russia (or the USSR) than with the Ukrainian state. Barely anyone in
France supports the 13 November attackers, thankfully.
Perhaps also because I have been on both
sides of the new “border” in the ATO zone and seen how people inside the
occupied territories are suffering, I find Petro Poroshenko’s sanctimonious talk
particularly galling. Ukraine did not start this war. Ukraine has in many ways
done well to muster a military response to it. But that does not mean that
Ukraine’s response to Russia’s attack is beyond criticism.
Innocent people have been killed by
Ukrainian rockets, as well as Russian ones. Homes have been destroyed by
Ukrainian fire. Ukraine’s policies, particularly regarding travel in and out of
the occupied territories, have turned more and more people in the Donbas
against Kyiv, and exacerbated the conflict – exactly as Putin hoped, no doubt.
Poroshenko is the head of the armed forces
of a country that is party to a conflict. Defending Ukraine against Putin is
hardly an easy task, and some mistakes are inevitable. But by virtue of his
position Poroshenko bears responsibility for those mistakes. It is distasteful
for him to pose as though he is as innocent as a Parisian rock fan.
One can and must, of course, also sternly
criticise the West’s limp and confused response, and unwillingness to give
Ukraine more help.
But if the West needs to be persuaded to
stay on Ukraine’s side, Petro Poroshenko is not doing a good job. His inaction
on corruption, failure to sell Roshen, and refusal to fire the general
prosecutor Viktor Shokin are tarnishing Ukraine’s image abroad. Speeches like
the one he made in Paris do nothing to remedy that situation. French people and
Westerners generally are traumatised by what happened in Paris on 13 November.
When they see Poroshenko making these highly tendentious comparisons, they don’t
well up with sympathy, they just think, “What?”. Leaders, meanwhile, may doubt
the Ukrainian President’s political acumen.
Because this was not the time or the place
to put so much emphasis on Russia’s war in Ukraine. The COP 21 environment
summit is a hugely important event for the whole world. Ultimately, the fates
of far, far more people than 45 million Ukrainians could depend on the outcome
of these talks.
Ukraine’s situation is also, in part, the
result of environmental irresponsibility – that of previous governments. Poroshenko
did mention the terrible state of the Donbas’ environment and the need for help
repairing it, and rightly so. He could have gone on to talk about the links
between excessive energy consumption and war: if Ukraine, one of the least
energy-efficient countries in the world, had pursued stringent environmentalist
policies over the last 25 years and weaned itself off Russian gas, this war might
well not be happening. In the same way that the conflicts in the Middle East,
and attendant “terrorist” threats, are in large part the result of Western
over-dependence on oil.
If he had pursued that line, he could have
drawn attention to the conflict in Donbas whilst sticking to the theme of the
environment, made some intelligent points and won plaudits. Instead, he did his
country a disservice.
Gulliver Cragg is a correspondent for France 24, covering Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. He lives in Kyiv. Cragg can be reached at [email protected] or found on Twitter.
